Module 2: Personality tests (ethics and methods)

Quiz #2 Questions

1) Which of the following is NOT an ethical problem with personality tests? 2) A test's psychometric properties... give you information about whether to trust its results 3) Personality tests are often used... by the general public for entertainment and self-study, by clinical and forensic psychologists for assessments, by business and industry for selection and team-building 4) Enneagram personality tests...are not considered to have much legitimacy within academic psychology 5) Personality tests...are based on theories of personality 6) Projective personality tests have three required elements:... Ambiguous stimuli; unconscious projection; symbolic interpretation 7) Regarding the Rorschach Inkblots Test... Dr. B administered them to patients when she trained on an inpatient psychiatry unit 8) The Thematic Apperception Test's ambiguous drawings... are supposed to be neutral but lean toward negative themes 9) The article you read on 'faking good' on personality tests by medical school applicants suggests that... medical school selection pressures significantly motivate applicants to self-enhance on these tests 10) In the 2019 article you read on game-like personality assessment, the authors describe the development of a new personality measure. To test the validity of their new measure, they compare its results to the results of an already well-established test of the same traits on a sample of people who take both tests. In doing so, they are using the validated measure as a _____________ to establish the validity of the other measure... gold standard

split-half reliability

A measure of reliability in which a test is split into two parts and an individual's scores on both halves are compared.

Rorschach inkblot test (1921)

A projective personality test in which individual interpretations of the meaning of a set of unstructured inkblots are analyzed to identify a respondent's inner feelings and interpret his or her personality structure exner scoring helped make this test a little more reliable BUT STILL HAVE VERY LITTLE VALIDITY

PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT AND THE PERILS OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

IF IT'S NOT BASED ON SCIENCE IT'S NOT VALID!!! IT'S PSUEDO SCIENCE •Astrology (horoscope), Phrenology (observing and/or feeling the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes), Enneagrams (is a system of personality typing that describes patterns in how people interpret the world and manage their emotions), and other juicy non-science •Fun, even helpful to people. So what's the problem? ---Barnum effect; People have the tendency to see themselves in vague, stock descriptions of personality ---Gives people misleading information about themselves (unethical) •Uses of tests in determining people's futures (psychic's) ---Lack of systematic basis/entirely arbitrary

conceptual validity

Refers to how well a specific research hypothesis maps onto the broader theory that it was designed to test.

Cultural validity

The belief that culture makes sense to the people in that culture the extent to which instruments consider worldviews that differ from the dominate culture

ecological validity

The extent to which a study is realistic or representative of real life. NOT ABSTRACT •*Translation issues* could effect the way the research question effects those taking the personality test, which impacts validity •*Reading level* could effect the way the research question in interpreted those taking the personality test, which impacts validity •Normative group scoring (are these subjects 'normal' and could be applied to the general population/ or vice versa) •Subjective scoring (make personality test criteria clear) •Introspection; honesty; self-awareness (personality constructs that could effect the individuals response on personality tests)

projective test

a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides *ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics (unconscious mind)* ex. ink blot test, TAT card which usually pull for negative thoughts straight out the get-go •Amazing staying power, remain in broad psychiatric use *despite little validity testing* •Based on psychoanalytic theory ---Projecting unconscious impulses onto ambiguous stimuli PROJECTIVE TEST ARE SUPPOSE TO "REVEAL" OUR SECRETS/ THIOUGHTS THAT ARE NOT SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE AND A PERSON IS TOO "EMBARASSED" TO ADMIT

personality tests are NOT atheoretical

atheoretical: not based on or concerned with theory PERSONALITY TESTS INVOLVE ONE OR MULTIPLE THEORIES •Personality tests are based on theories of personality development and/or structure •The wide-ranging tests based on these theories vary in their premises, as well as ---the level of scientific scrutiny they have faced ---their psychometrics

gold standard validity

comparison of results of a new method to a gold standard

face validity

extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring

inter-rater reliability

indicates how consistent scores are likely to be if the responses are scored by two or more raters using the same item, scale, or instrument measure of agreement among observers on how they record and classify a particular event

Personality Assessment

instruments measuring different traits or aspects of character •Personality Tests are TOOLS ---Are based on a THEORY of Personality •We've developed using METHODS of test development (math used here) •Have a wide range of PROBLEMS: limitations and dangers

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

projective test requiring examinees to tell a story in response to ambiguous pictures a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Racism and other ethical horrors

reflex's racist culture of the time of development •Exclusion of minorities from entire process of test development •Misuse and misapplication of personality tests (not seen on an individual level rather than a whole class of people which was WRONG, has been used to determine wrong diagnosis's (determined education and institution potential for people)) •Biased -racist, sexist, homophobic -interpretations of test results •Deception and Its Contexts (watch for social desirability answers from people) •Implicit Association (not used for standard personality testing: measures reaction time and physiological differences. Biases, racist tendencies etc.) and Projective Tests (involve *unconscious mind* rather than *small changes in behavior*) projective tests are weaker than objective tests due to the way the tests are measured (conceptual vs objective)

Psychometrics

study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits in a reliable and valid way based on mathematical analysis. allows us to test: *•Reliability...* -Test/retest performance -Inter-rater -Split-half/repeated items *•Validity...* -Ecological / cultural -Nomothetic / conceptual -Gold-standard

normative group

the group whose performance is used in the comparison and interpretation of an individual's score

Barnum effect

the tendency to accept certain information as true, such as character assessments or horoscopes, even when the information is so vague as to be worthless. People have the tendency to see themselves in vague, stock descriptions of personality who would disagree with good things said about themselves??? NOBODY

Questions when planning a personality test

•When to trust a personality test? - make sure you're the gold standard •What is the goal? What is your role? - make sure you're acting in an ethical manner. Do it for fun not for the wrong reasons •What are the test's psychometric properties?